Please excuse my late posting on chapter 1, I hope it would still be accepted...
So far we discussed at length the introduction of Lilas character through
the opening sentences. But what can we learn about the man?
I feel a certain discomfort with the first chapter of Lila. I do not find it
as engaging as the rest of the book. There is a feeling of uneasiness, a
slow start , it doesn't quite flow (until HE finds out he can dance...).
Who is he? what kind of person is there next to Lila in bed? We get a
glimpse into his mind, how he thinks about her. he is very perceptive, but
also somewhat detached. I identify with his personality.
Lets skip forward a couple of pages:
"It was so strange. All the time he had been coming down the canal through
lock after lock she had been making the same journey but he did'nt know she
was there." (Corgi ed. P. 14)
Having found so much meaning in "She didn't know he was there" this sentence
must be a reflection of the opening one. What does it mean?
There is a strong sense of destiny. The image of coming down through a
canal, almost the image of birth... Lock after lock opens up for them as
they are drawn towards this predestined moment... towards the light....
Neither of them knows the other is there... that should put an end the
solipsistic discussion: The other IS there, though we don't know it...
"They were descending out of the sky" what a poetic image: like angels,
boats decending out of the sky... at this point the novel takes off. "Their
boats were coming down, down through the night out of the sky where they had
been all this time without their knowing it."
So both of them didn't know where they had been. They came from the night
and the sky, the unreal realm of dreams... Everything that happened untill
this moment is transformed into a vague memmory, a dream.
What is it about not knowing that is so essential to the novel?
Phaderus often talks of himself through the description of landscape and
places. It's a literary method - especially usefull when things are too
difficult to describe (see the STORM chapter up ahead, or CLIMBING the
MOUNTAIN in ZMM). So we must take a very carefull look at the place he is
in. It may give us a clue as to his state of mind, literrally WHERE he is at
the moment.
There is some difficulty, danger coming through the locks, a dark oily
river, strong undercurrents inthe water, but at last he is sailing past the
looming girders towards the lights.
They decend out of the sky in Troy. What is the mythological or historical
significance of Troy? Any relation to Phaederus?
Troy is in Ionia, which according to Bertrand Russel in "a history of
western Philosophy" is the source of Greek culture:
"Homer as a finished achievement was a prooduct of Ionia.... sometime during
the sixth century at latest, the Homeric poems became fixed in their present
form. It was also during this century that greek science and philosophy and
mathematics began. At the time events of fundemental importance were
happening in other parts of the world. Confucius, Buddah, and Zoroaster, if
they existed, probably belong to the same century. ... Towards the close of
the century the greek cities of Ionia made a fruitless rebellion [against
the Persians] which was put down and their best men became exiles. Several
of the philosophers of this period were refugees' who wandered from city to
city in the still unenslaved parts of the Hellenic world, spreading the
civilization that until then, had been mainly confined to Ionia."
So being "born" in Troy is a prety straightforward allusion, the source of
philosophy...
Any more ideas on this passge?
miv
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